Solid particulate products, such as grain, animal feed (barley, corn, wheat, and animal by-products), cereals, cat litter, and other particulate materials, are normally converted from bulk material into smaller portions for sale. As part of the packaging process, a bulk quantity of product is placed into a hopper. At the exit end of the hopper is a valve that controls the rate of product flow out of the hopper. To accurately and efficiently fill units of such products, manufacturing technologies have developed techniques to continuously monitor product flow.
In some manufacturing processes, it is either necessary or desirable to suspend the hopper from above, and in this case the strict minimum number of scales or load cells required is one, but, if the hopper must be stationary (as many manufacturing processes require), the hopper requires support against translation and rotation in multiple planes, three supports are usually employed, one for each scale.
Employing multiple scales has a number of disadvantages, such as cost, difficulty of installation, and maintenance. In addition, measurement errors may occur as the result of scale miscalibration, or the malfunction of any scale can affect the entire system.
In view of the foregoing, it would be an improvement in the art to provide a scale system for a suspended hopper that employs a single scale.